20.03 | The Message We Live
1 Corinthians 9
'For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them.’
1 Corinthians 9:19
Most of us know we should eat healthier. We know we should eat more organic and less processed food. We know that the environment would benefit from us reducing our meat consumption, and that home baked bread is far better for you than a loaf of Hovis. We know that good diet should be supplemented by regular exercise, and that being outdoors is generally better for your wellbeing than being indoors.
Most of us know this. Knowledge isn’t our problem.
We’ve got some very dear friends who, more than anyone we know, live this. We spend a day with them, and we enter into their organic foodie utopia for a number of hours. It’s healthy and delicious, and our friendship always grows deeper around the slow process of making and mixing and marinading really good food. We’ll often intersperse food prep and consumption with getting outside, swimming or paddle boarding, hiking or running.
When we leave our time with these friends, we’re always inspired to live better. We smell of river water and wood smoke, with full bellies and happy hearts. And our shopping list for the next week always is a little bit healthier.
Why?
Because, when an idea is embodied in a life, it sinks far deeper into your heart than when it was just an idea.
Because we’re more impacted by example than we are by theory.
Because truth lived is far more inspiring that truth heard.
Paul spent a full eighteen months living in Corinth, living with the same Priscilla and Aquila that we met at the end of Romans. Paul spent his time there planting the young church, and earning his keep through joining the household tent-making trade.
Eighteen months. Of speaking a message. But, more significantly, living that message.
And in today’s passage this is right where he goes. Not just to these ideas of freedom and love, but to his very own lived expression of it. Paul is today’s example for Paul’s point.
His line of thinking goes something like this:
As an apostle, he’s entitled to certain things. He’s entitled to getting married, earn a living from his preaching, or to express his own culture. All of these things are permitted to him. He’s allowed them. The Gospel has given him such freedom.
However, he wants to emphasise how he has continually made radical decisions in the opposite direction. Not because he has to, but because he chooses to. His freedom is exercised in self-restriction for the benefit of others.
He chooses not to marry, having articulated having this specific ‘gift’ two chapters ago, in order to live with undivided devotion to God.
He chooses not to take an income from his ministry, despite there being both Scriptural and indeed Jesus mandated permission for this.
He chooses to adapt his practices and diet and worship in order to minister to Jews differently to how he ministers to Gentiles.
He chooses.
He was free not to. But he chose to.
This comes and strikes us in our very moment. Because Paul’s message, proclaimed in his life choices, radically impacted Corinth. His simple living of his values was far more transformative than his simple speaking of those values. Why? Because his way of living didn’t just talk about the Jesus who abandoned everything in love; it looked like Him.
Queen Elizabeth II, in her Christmas message in 2016, spoke these words: “Christ’s example helps me see the value of doing small things with great love.”
Small things. Great love.
Our small actions speak with great power.
What message will our life speak today?
Reflect:
This journey of maturity is a lifelong one. It happens one little choice at a time, accompanied by the Spirit.
Ask Him to help you here. Ask Him to show you if there is one place that He is inviting you to the higher way: to laying down some comfort, some freedom, some privilege, for the lifting up of another?
Act on this as soon as you possibly can.
Pray:
Father,
I do a lot of reducing.
I reduce the idea of holiness,
To rule-keeping;
I reduce the idea of freedom,
To self-actualisation;
I reduce the idea of love,
To a mere feeling.
Today, would you expand my ways of thinking and living,
To more deeply inhabit the place
Where extraordinary freedom meets extraordinary love,
That my life may speak,
Through a million moments of kindness and love,
The message of your heart
To a hurting world.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Deuteronomy 7-9 | Psalm 37:1-11